In many meeting scenarios, meeting attendees desire to have private real-time communications during a meeting. For example, in a meeting between two teams of representatives, a member of one team may wish to communicate with another team member during the meeting with regard to the team's objectives or strategy, in view of developments occurring live during the meeting, without the communication being perceived by any member of the other team. In another example, during a presentation, an advisor to the presenter may wish to provide immediate feedback to the presenter during the presentation without interrupting the presentation and/or letting other attendees know that the feedback is being provided.
Using existing technologies to communicate with another meeting attendee during a meeting, a meeting attendee must access their laptop or mobile device (e.g. smartphone) to use either i) an online meeting application through which the meeting is being provided, or ii) a dedicated communication application (e.g. a text messaging service). When using existing online meeting applications, the attendee wishing to send the private message must use their laptop or mobile device to find the other attendee within a meeting attendee list, type in the message, and then enter a command that causes the message to be transmitted to the other attendee. When using a communication application such as a text messaging service, the attendee must use their laptop or smartphone to locate and select the other attendee within their contacts, or to manually type-in the other attendee's name or phone number, and then type in the message and enter a command causing the text message to be transmitted the other attendee.